Continuous Code Quality Improvement

While working on code in the context of a certain task, a programmer often discovers some preexisting quality issue. When this happens, there is a choice to be made:

• Fix the quality issue on the spot, and commit the fix in the context of the task at hand; or:
• Only make changes that are strictly necessary for the task at hand, and introduce a separate task for fixing the quality issue.

The 'gay gene' paradox

What causes homosexuality? The predominant understanding is that the causes are genetic, but this seems to be in conflict with the notion of natural selection: an individual who does not reproduce is a dead-end for the genes that they carry; therefore, the 'gay gene' should have gone extinct. A number of hypotheses have been proposed, attempting to resolve this paradox, but they are not very convincing. In this post I present a couple of my own hypotheses, which I believe do a better job at resolving the paradox.